Also Available As:

American Lawyers

Richard L. Abel

This comprehensive picture of the contemporary American legal profession traces its development over the last hundred years. Abel examines a variety of topics including the nature and effect of entry barriers, the rise and fall of restrictive practices, efforts to create demand for lawyers' services, self-regulation, the income and status of lawyers, the growth of public and private employment, the displacement of solo and small firms, and the allocation of lawyers to roles.

American Lawyers

Richard L. Abel

Description

This detailed portrait of American lawyers traces their efforts to professionalize during the last 100 years by erecting barriers to control the quality and quantity of entrants. Abel describes the rise and fall of restrictive practices that dampened competition among lawyers and with outsiders. He shows how lawyers simultaneously sought to increase access to justice while stimulating demand for services, and their efforts to regulate themselves while forestalling external control. Data on income and status illuminate the success of these efforts. Charting the dramatic transformation of the profession over the last two decades, Abel documents the growing number and importance of lawyers employed outside private practice (in business and government, as judges and teachers) and the displacement of corporate clients they serve. Noting the complexity of matching ever more diverse entrants with more stratified roles, he depicts the mechanism that law schools and employers have created to allocate graduates to jobs and socialize them within their new environments. Abel concludes with critical reflections on possible and desirable futures for the legal profession.

American Lawyers

Richard L. Abel

Reviews and Awards

"Richard Abel's most recent project has turned contemporary history like a craftsman to provide us with a punctilious chronicle of a transformative period in English legal politics. The rishness of English Lawyers lets us see individuals and institutions respond to one another, develop and lose credibility, succeed and fail in the marketplace od ideas, and parlay those positions into future successes and losses. We can watch lawyers hoist the profession and themselveswith their own rhetorical petard, and we also witness the interaction of argumentation, ideology, and interests in modern politics."--Law and Politics Book Review